this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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I don't see them joining anything?
I mean, let's be real, what major function has Mozilla implemented into Firefox that hasn't been opt-out? And no, UI doesn't count, I'm talking features.
The problem isn't the existence of AI. The problem is the inescapably of it and how, under Microsoft or Google, it will harvest your data whether you like it or not. When you tell them "fuck off, leave me alone, and keep my words out of your AI's mouth", they're not going to listen. Profit motive requires them to invade.
Mozilla is a non-profit, and they've long been very good about letting you opt out things, and listening. I'm not worried about them putting AI into Firefox, because I can be reasonably sure it will be optional, in a way I know the others won't.
I'd rather they didn't go chasing this car at all, to be honest, because they're not likely to catch it, but whatever. They're renewing focus on the browser and I'm taking that as a win.
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We already have AI in Firefox. And not gonna lie, offline (I.e. absolutely private) translations for webpages is pretty neat.
It’s really good but I do wish it supported more languages like Russian or Japanese. So far most of the times I have had to translate a page, Firefox didn’t support the language.
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Let me share some fun Mozilla facts about their previous CEO who has now stepped down to “executive chairwoman” last week.
She received 6.9 million dollars in 2022 and 5 million in 2021, 3 million in 2020.
Her replacement is an executive from AirBnB and eBay. We will find out how much both of these are earning in 2025 when they release their financial statements.
They fired 60 staff and are adding AI to their flagship program to earn more money.
Tell me this is a good thing.
Tell me this is a good thing.
Mozilla has long been the most ethical player in this space (while still producing SOTA ML). All of their datasets/models are open source and usually crowdsourced. Not to mention, their existing work is primarily in improving accessibility.
ALSO, the other half of this story is that Firefox is becoming the primary focus again. Everybody's freaking out about the AI stuff but that's because they're only reading the headlines. The programs they've shut down are things like Hubs (Mozilla's metaverse platform), the VPN, and the sensitive data scrubber (which was using a third party service anyway).
As a software developer I am huge supporter of Mozilla's developer initiatives from Manifest V2 implementation to MDN. But it's also important to be realistic Mozilla has long had major money problems, and not the kind that giving them more would fix.
The Lunduke shit again? The one that takes offense to money being donated to support "politics" i.e abortion rights?
Take a look at the other trash he posts on his reddit profile. That blog is not a trustworthy source, by any stretch, and it's sweetly ignoring that he's not looking at Mozilla's spending alone, but of 3 separate entities that exist under the umbrella of the Mozilla Foundation.
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Tell me this is a good thing.
Ok. Mozilla was spreading itself too thin, spending resources trying to compete with multiple products against established brands that were already way ahead of them. They needed to focus down onto their core product rather than frivolously cast about.
And AI is the technology of the future, despite all the whinging and griping by commenters on the subject. It's being incorporated into the other major browsers, it's a must-have if Firefox is to remain relevant. I'm sure you'll be able to turn it off in the settings if you don't want it and if you're really concerned about getting AI cooties there'll be niche forks that are compiled without it.
And the ever increasing CEO wages and hiring of AirBnB/eBay executive as CEO? Their previous CEOs salary alone could've covered everyone of those employees fired.
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Things to add to your product when you want to look hip and trendy, but dont have any real ideas how to make your product better:
- 1990s: visitor counter
- 1995: Popups
- 2000s: flash intros
- 2005: stock photography
- 2010: local weather widget
- 2015: share to social media widgets
- 2020: fullsize 4k background stock videos
- 2024: AI assistant
1995: animated gifs, , guest books, site rings!
"Under Construction" GIF
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You forgot about blockchain and NFTs.
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uggggggggggh. I'm using Firefox because chrome is really going too far with it's manifest v3 garbage killing decent adblockere and Firefox is basically the only non chromium based option. Please for the love of everything that is holy. Just. Make. Your. Browser. Better. Don't need ai gimmicks. Definitely don't need to lay people off. You need to get back on track. Holy heck. This is the worst.
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Gonna have to pass on that one good buddy. Don't shit up Firefox.
why the fuck would I need an AI in a browser? 0 fucks given for this "feature". firefox is devolving into an edge.
Nowadays we are supposed to need AI everywhere. I'm waiting for my AI bidet so that I can chat with it when I do my business.
"What is my purpose?"
"You wash my asshole when I poop"
"Oh my god"
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Fuck sake. Sick of ai being added into everything. Please dont ruin firefox
You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the browsers, not leave it in darkness!
I want a upvote for sharing, down vote the concept button. I hate it.
As much as I hate it, think it's a terrible part for a free, open, and secure web; it's probably a solid business move based on the hype.
Votes are meant only to increase or decrease visibility, especially on Lemmy where karma doesn't exist.
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From what I understand, they're divesting resources that aren't in Firefox or at least involved in a trustworthy/open source AI project.
I see a lot of people in this theead are upset at this, but I'm tentatively excited. If they can pull off a good AI engine, especially built into the browser, that would be nice. If it had offline capabilities, that would be amazing.
Even if they can pull off a good AI solution that's not built into Firefox but it's offline, I'd be really excited. I'm not crazy about having especially detailed and intimate information being thrown to some vendor out there, not knowing where it's going. Modern AI can do some amazing things, but a lot of them reserve the right to have a human read whatever you put in them and warn you about that. This is too limiting to me for my preferred use-cases.
One concern I have is that Firefox and its engine are one of the last non-chromium browser platforms that have a household name and are FOSS. So to me, that has to be the first goal to keep healthy. Maybe the AI thing will help in this respect
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as Firefox is the only browser that can't trace its lineage back to Apple and WebKit
What a slap on Konqueror's face.
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What a sad day to be alive. I want to believe nothing bad will happen but this is scary
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I hate that they are laying people off. I do however want to use some machine learning powered adblock, for those harder to block ads. otherwise I don't feel like every app needs an AI assistant. It's bad for the Internet generally and for the power grid.
In theory, that sounds amazing.
In practice, it will most likely need to send the contents of your browser to some third-party server. No, thanks.
(Unless it's crowdsourced, like the first person to visit a page gets dinged, but then the next persons just downloads the set of rules instead of uploading content.)
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The paradox of tech right now "we are going to build the most complex technology known to man into our product in the next 12 months. Are we hiring record numbers of people to get it done? No. We fired a bunch of people and everyone else will just have to be extremely hardcore."
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Been saying the writing is on the wall for their enshittification for months. On lemmy. Every time I end up with 20+ downvotes.
Eat me. Here it comes.
Still using Firefox until it officially sucks, but if you haven't seen it coming you've been willfully ignorant.
I expect a Ubuntu fork packaged with Firefox a la windows 98/IE as a paid OS in the next 5 years to try to undercut Microsoft. Or something. Idk the future.
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That's a very good way of me leaving Firefox behind...
To go where, though? Lynx? Everything else is Chromium and that's not much better.
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I hope the folks laid off land on their feet.
I'm starting to think FF is being deliberately run into the ground by the higher ups. It would be good to hear from some of the devs about their thoughts on all this.
This surprises people? Mozilla has always been Mozilla's biggest enemy.
Okay, well I'm ready to write a angry email now who's with me? Anybody know the best address?
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An exclusively locally running, opensource LLM might be a good thing though. In my amazing dreams where that's what they're planning to do.
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